we flit from life to life, to find it again elsewhere in the abysms of
Time and Change? One thing too was quite identical--the birthmark of
the new moon above the breast which the priests of the Kendah had
declared was always the seal that marked their prophetess, the
guardian of the Holy Child.



When the procession had quite departed and I could no longer hear the
sound of singing, I remounted and rode on to my house, or rather to
that of my mother, the great lady Tiu, which was situated beneath the
wall of the old palace facing towards the Nile. Indeed my heart was
full of this mother of mine whom I loved and who loved me, for I was
her only child, and my father had been long dead; so long that I could
not remember him. Eight months had gone by since I saw her face and in
eight months who knew what might have happened? The thought made me
cold for she, who was aged and not too strong, perhaps had been
gathered to Osiris. Oh! if that were so!

I shook my tired horse to a canter, Bes riding ahead of me to clear a
road through the crowded street in which, at this hour of sundown, all
the idlers of Memphis seemed to have gathered. They stared at me
because it was not common to see men riding in Memphis, and with
little love, since from my dress and escort they took me to be some
envoy from their hated master, the Great King of the East. Some even
threatened to bar the way; but we thrust through and presently turned
into a thoroughfare of private houses standing in their own gardens.
Ours was the third of these. At its gate I leapt from my horse, pushed
open the closed door and hastened in to seek and learn.